Habeas Viscus: Racializing Assemblages, Biopolitics, and Black Feminist Theories of the Human

A really solid examination and troubling of biopolitics and racialization. It can be rough to get into at first, but once you get going, it gets easier and easier to read, and by the end you're really invested. The last chapter in particular is really good in terms of thinking about what it might mean to consider a futurity outside of the western Man. I really loved chapter 5 ("Law") as well, for its examination of how documented "wounding" may be necessary for full personhood. It may really help you to have reader Hortense Spillers and Sylvia Wynter before you read this, but it's not necessary by any stretch. A really good book overall,and one I'm glad to have read.

Inaccessible text that requires multiple re-readings that's best enjoyed in the company of other critical readers/thinkers or in a graduate level course. Habeas Viscus presents the role of race in understanding the human through a unique amalgamated lens of biopolitics, racializing assemblages, feminism, and black studies. Wehelye's work is a new utilization of theories and evidence to show what many already know: racism is a deeply rooted concept from which other meanings, like that of the human, are drawn.